


Tyrannicide

by KathrynShadow



Series: Contracts [1]
Category: League of Legends
Genre: Assassination, Attempted Demonic Cannibalism, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-05
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-28 09:16:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10828290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KathrynShadow/pseuds/KathrynShadow
Summary: Swain didn’t make a habit of giving any new information away unless he had to. It wasn’t too much of a stretch to imagine that the same was true during fights to the death. Katarina pressed forward…...and recoiled as those plague-ridden mockeries of wings spread, revealing a writhing mass hidden under the tattered feathers. No—no, not a singular mass, but birds. Dozens upon dozens of black birds, clawing along his body like maggots on a corpse, pushing their way to the surface and launching into awful flight.Towards her.--Tumblr RP your-character-killing-my-character prompt.





	Tyrannicide

His body changed with the crunching of bone and the hiss of feathers exploding into being. Katarina took a half-step back, watching as the crippled General doubled in mass, his legs twisting, joints reversing and rebuilding themselves with a chorus of snaps. His robes seemed to melt into his body, his skin turning black and scaled and skeletally tight below what used to be his knees, bursting with a coat of ragged feathers everywhere else. His arms lengthened, bent, the knobbled angles thickening before being concealed with the pinions bursting through the flesh; in seconds, they were replaced by the vague approximation of wings. His neck pulled away from his body, his skull shortening; pockmarks in the flesh took form near his temples, deepened, and became four new eye sockets to join the hollow red glare that had taken over the first two. A beak formed from his mouth, devouring his face, his head tilting from side to side to keep Katarina in at least one set of his six terrible eyes.

She had never seen him do that before, and she’d seen other people try to kill him. She could only assume that it meant that she was actually hurting him.

Swain didn’t make a habit of giving any new information away unless he had to. It wasn’t too much of a stretch to imagine that the same was true during fights to the death. Katarina pressed forward…

...and recoiled as those plague-ridden mockeries of wings spread, revealing a writhing mass hidden under the tattered feathers. No—no, not a singular mass, but birds. Dozens upon dozens of black birds, clawing along his body like maggots on a corpse, pushing their way to the surface and launching into awful flight.

Towards her.

Katarina raised her blades, shielding her face with wild stabs and slashes towards the feathered beasts, but protecting one part of her body only left the rest of it open. A dozen tiny corpses fell to the ground, dissolving into ash and then into nothing, but claws latched onto her back and sides nonetheless.

She’d come prepared for a fight, everything but her face covered in leather armor. The birds tore through it like it was cotton wherever they landed. A razor-sharp beak bit into her shoulder and she choked back a startled cry, flinching down and lashing upwards at it. The creature fell, but another took its place in an instant, grabbing hold of the half-attached strip of flesh its fellow had abandoned and twisting,  _ twisting _ , until it tore completely away.

Kat watched, when her continued fight against the birds allowed her room to glance, as it flew back towards Swain. She watched as it tucked itself back under the feathers of his chest, its bloody offering still clamped in its beak. She watched as the feathers bulged and closed over it, reabsorbing the deformed animal that they had birthed only seconds before.

(Swain was  _ eating _ her.)

Perhaps the proper reaction was horror, but what flared in her chest was rage. How  _ dare _ he--

An animal growl clawed from her throat. Dropping into pure defense wouldn't work; she couldn't kill enough birds to keep them off of her entirely, and for all she knew Swain could keep this up forever. The only way forward was to attack.

Kat threw herself forward, heedless of the cackling cries of the flock, the flashes of pain as they tore through armor and flesh alike. She screamed as they flew at her head, taking advantage of her shift in priorities to dive for her eyes, but it was in fury and not in fear: a wordless, improvised warcry.

The last thing she saw before the birds gouged her eye sockets empty was Swain taking a single step back.

_ He was afraid. _ He was afraid and Katarina laughed, howling into the dark as she lunged blindly forward. The ravens tore the lips from her face, flayed her one tiny scrap of skin at a time, and she still laughed because now her swords were slicing flesh and crunching through bone and Jericho Swain was  _ AFRAID OF HER _

Katarina threw herself forward, flinging both of them to the ground, twisting and stabbing with no pattern and no technique. She was a wild thing, maddened by pain and triumph and the taste of bitter blood spraying over her face as she severed something Swain couldn't heal fast enough.

She didn't let herself fall until the gurgles stopped.

**Author's Note:**

> shout-out to my bro at the (now archived) ravenousflocks.tumblr.com


End file.
